The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday that it had frozen more than $1 billion in assets belonging to oligarch and Vladimir Putin-linked Senator Suleiman Kerimov. It is one of the biggest acts of its kind.
Kerimov’s funds were located in a Delaware state-registered trust created in 2017 to hold and manage the Russians’ assets. Trusts are a popular tool used by oligarchs to hide their US assets and keep them safe from law enforcement.
As a senior minister in the ministry said, the seizure of property was an unusual case given the value of the funds used by a member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, and the complex legal framework. That money was kept in the US and then “invested” in layers of Bush companies to hide who it belonged to.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Treasury Department will use broad powers to aggressively enforce coordinated multilateral sanctions on those financing and benefiting from Russia’s war against Ukraine, even as Russian elites hide behind intermediaries and complex legal systems.
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